Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Book Review: Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
Writing Style-6.1
Originality-7.5
Plot-6.5
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-7.2
Overall-6.5
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I read it right on the heels of Jude the Obscure and they fit together fairly well. They are both staunchly feminist and attack societal strictures and institutions such as religion and marriage. Main Street is quite a bit lighter however, for the most part.
It is the story of Carol Kennicott, a well-educated young woman from Minneapolis who marries a country doctor and moves out to the small town of Gopher Prairie to make a life with him.
She misses her big city life with cultured friends and art and is pretty bored with Gopher Prairie. She resolves to transform the people of Gopher Prairie for the sake of her own sanity and their edification. For example, she forms a library board and encourages reading of more serious works and she forms a drama club to perform plays for the town. With each attempt, she is thwarted in her efforts, usually fairly comically. The town is simply happy with their simple, country-bumpkin lives, their blatant hypocrisies that aren’t so obvious to them, and their ability to not question anything about their lives any deeper than how to make more money, or what to eat for dinner, or what the other townsfolk thinks of them. For someone who has lived in the city and/or in the North and then returned to small-town life in the South, the characters in Gopher Prairie are definitely recognizable and Carol’s frustrations with them are easily relatable.
In the end, she is faced with many of the same questions that plagued Jude Hawley and Sue Bridehead – how to fit into a society that they are completely unable to relate to; how to deal with childrearing on top of these other problems; how to remain a good wife while maintaining her own individuality and opinions.
Lewis does a good job of complicating some of these issues (it’s not all about making fun of hicks). Carol’s husband Will is not really a bad guy. In arguments that they have about Carol’s unhappiness, he makes good coherent arguments about the good qualities of Gopher Prairie’s citizens. Carol gains a ton of respect for Will as he goes about his job as a country doctor and comes to understand how difficult it can be.
I’d certainly recommend this book if you enjoy these themes. It presents a great contrast between city and town living in the American Midwest in the early part of the 20th century. It’s surprisingly feminist to have been published in 1920 (I think) and to have been so well received by the public at the time. Even though it has several levels, it could be boiled down to the story of a bored housewife. I think that it was and continues to be of supreme importance to tell the stories of bored housewives. I’d also point out that it was around this time that we gave bored housewives the right to vote.
Originality-7.5
Plot-6.5
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-7.2
Overall-6.5
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I read it right on the heels of Jude the Obscure and they fit together fairly well. They are both staunchly feminist and attack societal strictures and institutions such as religion and marriage. Main Street is quite a bit lighter however, for the most part.
It is the story of Carol Kennicott, a well-educated young woman from Minneapolis who marries a country doctor and moves out to the small town of Gopher Prairie to make a life with him.
She misses her big city life with cultured friends and art and is pretty bored with Gopher Prairie. She resolves to transform the people of Gopher Prairie for the sake of her own sanity and their edification. For example, she forms a library board and encourages reading of more serious works and she forms a drama club to perform plays for the town. With each attempt, she is thwarted in her efforts, usually fairly comically. The town is simply happy with their simple, country-bumpkin lives, their blatant hypocrisies that aren’t so obvious to them, and their ability to not question anything about their lives any deeper than how to make more money, or what to eat for dinner, or what the other townsfolk thinks of them. For someone who has lived in the city and/or in the North and then returned to small-town life in the South, the characters in Gopher Prairie are definitely recognizable and Carol’s frustrations with them are easily relatable.
In the end, she is faced with many of the same questions that plagued Jude Hawley and Sue Bridehead – how to fit into a society that they are completely unable to relate to; how to deal with childrearing on top of these other problems; how to remain a good wife while maintaining her own individuality and opinions.
Lewis does a good job of complicating some of these issues (it’s not all about making fun of hicks). Carol’s husband Will is not really a bad guy. In arguments that they have about Carol’s unhappiness, he makes good coherent arguments about the good qualities of Gopher Prairie’s citizens. Carol gains a ton of respect for Will as he goes about his job as a country doctor and comes to understand how difficult it can be.
I’d certainly recommend this book if you enjoy these themes. It presents a great contrast between city and town living in the American Midwest in the early part of the 20th century. It’s surprisingly feminist to have been published in 1920 (I think) and to have been so well received by the public at the time. Even though it has several levels, it could be boiled down to the story of a bored housewife. I think that it was and continues to be of supreme importance to tell the stories of bored housewives. I’d also point out that it was around this time that we gave bored housewives the right to vote.
